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Reuel Gerecht has asked that I add this to his original statement, posted below. I will just post the whole thought here. Again, he's referring to the allegations contained in a CBS report made by US intelligence officials that say Chalabi met with a "nefarious" character from the "dark side" of Iran's intelligence service, an individual who is known to plot operations against the United States, and never reported it to his US contacts.
...This info all sounds deeply, deeply dubioius. The specifics of an Iranian intel meeting with Chalabi are, however, likely. The Iranian [Chief of Station] COS in Baghdad I think met with Chalabi on occasion--and he certainly met other Iranians on a regular basis--as do MANY Iraqis, including such folks as Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim of SCIRI and Ibrahim Jafari of the Da'wa, on whom the CPA has often been dependent for communication with Sistani. And last I checked, Chalabi is not an employee of the USG and therefore not required to run to Mr. Bremer or the CIA COS in Baghdad and say, "I just met an Iranian." If he were not meeting with a whole variety of Iranians--especially the "dark force" guys in Intel and the Guards Corps, he would be an idiot, and certainly not the type of fellow you would want on the Governing Council.
It is possible that Aras Habib, the INC security and intel fellow, has an extracurricular relationship with Iranian intelligence. Whether that relationship, if it even exists, is fundamentally different from the relationships that Iranian intel probably has with numerous Iraqis in such organizations as SCIRI or Dawa, whether that relationship denotes control, and whether AH has ever given them info worth any money they may have paid him, is an entirely different question. It would be a very good idea for the NSC and the Senate and House Intel committees to yank up all the intercept, assuming intercept is at the bottom of this, and take a very close look at the history of American intercept of the MOI and see whether the analysis of this makes sense, to be sure we're not being sucker-punched by USG employees to hate Chalabi, hate the War, (oddly) blame Chalabi for the war, and hate those in the Pentagon and elsewhere who disagreed with the CIA about Chalabi, or by Iranian intel. Given the paucity of known facts in this case, I certainly wouldn't write with the certitude that so many in the press seem to have on this subject. It's odd. Given the closed nature of American intel, it's not astute.
Reuel's call for skepticism is a point well taken. And while the jury is still out, I think the neoconservatives would do much better to put Reuel on CNN than Laurie Mylroie. The fact is, neither Reuel nor we the civilian audience really know as a fact what evidence the US government has on Habib, or on Chalabi, for that matter. We are all potentially being spun. And not just by the USG; as happens, there is plenty of spinning coming from the usual places.
What's my take? I myself am convinced there's something to the charges that Chalabi and Habib have a covert relationship with Iranian intelligence. Of two types, secret meetings and actual US intelligence given to the Iranians. [I agree with RMG that Iranian intelligence is certainly meeting with SCIRI and Dawa but SCIRI and Dawa were not co-located with the DIA on a Pentagon-funded intelligence program, nor did we go to war based on the misinformation provided by their defectors, and whatever funds they may be getting from the CIA now, it doesn't amount to the nearly $40 million we gave Chalabi and co.] It is legitimate in my opinion that Chalabi and Habib should have been expected to behave according to a higher standard of transparency and forthrightness in terms of secret meetings with Iranian intelligence, given the fact that they were on the Pentagon payroll to provide intelligence to the DIA.
The White House (especially this White House) doesn't turn on a dime so easily. Think how long we've suffered through "misstatements" on the Iraq troop issue, for example. Something happened, more than Chalabi got to be a pest.
What's more, I have sources telling me that the people who are most troubled by the charges are in the Pentagon office of the secretary of defense and deputy secretary of defense's office. eg people who have both been made aware of what the nature of the charges are, and how it could affect them.
And there are the FBI, CIA and DIA investigations. And the CIA and DIA and whoever else really did go in to Baghdad and basically smash apart Chalabi's offices, with guns and sledgehammers. There are other ways to stop working with a pest, and one way would be just to cut him loose from the payroll, and tell Mr. Brahimi he's welcome to put whoever he wants on the Iraqi transitional government. [Permission he was apparently granted.]